Providing more confirmation that it’s not necessary to spend your holiday ticking notable cultural landmarks off your to-do list to have a good time, research by a Dutch university is about to be applied to the tourist offer in two major European cities to help spread visitor footfall away from already crowded hotspots.
Little-known spots just as enjoyable as big sights
Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Copenhagen in Denmark are set to “hide” some of their main sights from tourists, borrowing from research carried out by Breda University in 2021. In the original experiment, visitors to the eastern Dutch province of Overijssel were given one of two different trip planning tools. One was an app where the usual famous attractions were mapped out; the other was an AI travel guide entitled “Travel with Zoey” (overseen by a real employee) that gave more esoteric recommendations, highlighting the least-visited spots as unmissable experiences.
The trial found that both sets of tourists enjoyed their trip equally no matter which way they had planned their trip, with results suggesting that a site’s renown is less important to tourists than its perceived accessibility and entertainment value.
“People had an equally good time whether they went to the hot spots or not, and that is pretty important,” noted Ondrej Mitas, a senior lecturer in Applied Sciences at the faculty. “Whatever source reaches people with the least friction and makes the experience sound the most fun wins.”
Trial of two cities
To apply the findings more broadly, the team is now partnering with tourist boards in Amsterdam and Copenhagen to see effect of a similar approach in overcrowded cities. Amsterdam has been trialling ways to reduce the negative effects of overtourism on locals, including a ban on new hotel licences, and a “stay away” campaign targeting certain breeds of reveller with warnings about the consequences of excessive indulgence on vacation.
Similarly Copenhagen has had to reconsider its relationship with tourism, following a post-Covid tourism boom and a new preference for “coolcations” in northern Europe, that saw September 2023’s traffic through Copenhagen Airport up 110% year on year. But unlike Amsterdam, instead of focusing on discouraging the negative behaviours of some tourists, the Danish capital introduced a series of incentives to encourage positive actions, such as recycling and greener transport choices.
If the results of the latest trials are as expected “relatively the same as in Overijssel,” it will pave the way for the university team to “make this part of the toolkit for policymakers and destination management organizations,” said Rajneesh Badal, Zoey’s chief executive officer, meaning that more vacationers could find themselves “travelling with Zoey” and discovering the unexpected delights of lesser known treasures.
